Ms. Moore goes to Washington: Two Seattle teachers teach pols

Kristen Le, a kindergarten teacher in Seattle, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. At left is Rachelle Moore, a first-grade teacher at Madrona K-8. Photo courtesy Seattle Teacher Residency.

As they learn students’ names, allergies and bus schedules during the first weeks of school, addressing Congressional staffers in Washington, D.C., is surely the last thing on the mind of most teachers.

But that’s exactly where two Seattle educators — Kristen Le and Rachelle Moore — were on Tuesday, invited to share their experiences with representatives of Sen. Patty Murray, Rep. David Reichert and a slew of other politicians interested in better preparing educators for the classroom.

Teacher training, or the lack of it, looms large in the public conversation about problems in public education. Seattle has attempted to address this with an apprenticeship program, the Seattle Teacher Residency, aimed at preparing educators in ways similar to young physicians-in-training. Those accepted into the intensive, year-long program receive a University of Washington masters degree and, often, a job with Seattle Public Schools.

Moore, 27, had nothing like that when she began teaching first-graders at Madrona K-8 five years ago. Since then, all four educators who started there with her have left, and two quit the profession altogether.

“That’s why I got involved with the Seattle Teacher Residency, and why I wanted to talk about it in Washington, D.C.,” said Moore who now has more experience at Madrona than anyone else in building except the gym teacher. “I know a lot of really great people who ended up leaving, either for burn out or feeling isolated.”

Last year, she mentored Le, who has gone on to lead her own classroom at Van Asselt Elementary.

What follows is a brief interview with Moore about talking with government officials on Capitol Hill:

Q:How did you react to the invitation to speak in Washington, D.C.?

A: “I was a little nervous — I only have 5 years experience and I was thinking, ‘Why me? Why not somebody who’s been in the profession for 20 years?’ But this was about sharing the nitty-gritty groundwork with people who know all these buzz words about education and never, ever talk to real teachers.”

Q: You spoke with staffers from the House of Representatives and the Senate. What kinds of questions did they ask?

A: “In the Senate, they were really interested in this idea of a residency program and how it was different from traditional preparation. On the House side, it was more focused on where to put money — early education versus something else. They kept asking us, ‘What are the outcomes that are going to measure this residency approach? What’s going to be the evidence that will tell us this is an effective program?’ ”

Q: How did you respond to that?

A: “The teacher residency program requires a five-year commitment to staying in the district, and it encourages residents to pursue National Board Certification. So one way we’ll be able to measure success is by seeing how many people stay after their fifth year, pursue board certification and become teacher-leaders themselves.”

Q: Did anything surprise you?

A: “I’d imagined all these older people who had their minds made up. But no, these were young people who were really driven to do great things. It was much more dynamic than I expected. I wasn’t so politically knowledgeable before, but now that I’ve met all these different people I’m excited to get a little more involved with policy. I love being in the classroom — that’s where my heart is and I don’t plan to leave any time soon — but now I see that it’s part of a much bigger picture.”

Stories in the series

When tackling the topic of student discipline, some of the country’s toughest schools have done a turnaround. Instead of focusing on rules broken, they now ask kids to confront themselves. The result? Fewer suspensions and new perspective on the point of school itself. Read the story →

It stands to reason: Kick troubled students out of school and they often come back even worse. The Kent School District is trying to tackle this national problem by overhauling the way it handles discipline. But its answers spark even more questions. Read the story →

In an idea borrowed from college athletics, the University of Washington boosts promising engineering students — many of them women and minorities — with an extra year of academic work. Read the story →

Boosting the quality of preschool in Seattle could help children, and the city as a whole. A number of studies, including one from the ’60s, establish that potential. But there is no guarantee of success. Read the story →

Universal, free preschool in Tulsa, Okla., has produced results attracting national attention, and could be a blueprint for Seattle. But after 16 years the long-term outcomes raise almost as many questions as they answer. Read the story →

Communication failures both within Seattle Public Schools and with parents of children with disabilities continue to undermine the district’s efforts to fix longstanding problems in special education. Read the story →

A new focus on individualized advice and counseling, boosted by software tools, is helping hundreds more students earn degrees and certificates each year at Walla Walla Community College. Read the story →

The path to college often leaves disadvantaged students behind. Two unusual nonprofits, one based in Seattle, have helped vault thousands of low-income students onto university campuses. Read the story →

In an attempt to add depth to the curriculum in America's most popular advanced high-school courses, some local teachers threw out most of their lectures and replaced them with a series of projects. Results so far are encouraging. Read the story →

Western Washington University college students are working as mentors, tutors and role models for thousands of K-12 students in and around Bellingham. The goal: convince them that college should be part of their educational trajectory. Read the story →

Kent educators combed through transcripts and discovered 2,600 young people in their district without any kind of diploma or credential. Enter iGrad, a program linking dropouts with college, that has been flooded with kids who want a second chance. Read the story →

A community group in northwest Chicago has turned hundreds of hesitant parents into capable classroom helpers, role models and leaders by tapping into strengths many don't realize they have. Read the story →

Missing just a few days of class in sixth grade can predict whether you'll graduate from high school. That research powers a national anti-dropout effort that's making a difference at Seattle's Aki Kurose and Denny International middle schools. Read the story →

For years, students at White Center Heights Elementary logged some of the lowest test scores in King County. Then teachers tried something new, and the numbers soared by double-digits after just one year. So what happened, and could it be replicated elsewhere? Read the story →

About the authors

John Higgins is one of Education Lab's reporters. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2012 to 2013.

Katherine Long has been a reporter for The Seattle Times since 1990, focusing for the past three years on higher ed, with stories that have ranged from the complexities of prepaid tuition programs to nontraditional ways to earn a degree.

Claudia Rowe joined The Seattle Times’ reporting staff in 2013. She has written about education for The New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, among other publications.

Leah Todd is an education reporter at The Times. She previously covered education for the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming.

Mike Siegel has been a news photographer at the Seattle Times since 1987. His photography was used in a series titled "Methadone and the Politics of Pain," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for investigative reporting.

Linda Shaw is The Times’ education editor. Previously, she covered public education as a reporter at The Seattle Times for more than two decades. Her coverage has won numerous national and local awards and honors.

Caitlin Moran is community engagement editor for Education Lab. She came to The Times from Patch, where she spent three years managing hyperlocal news websites on the Eastside.

About Solutions Journalism Network

The Education Lab project is being done with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network. SJN is a non-profit organization created to legitimize and spread the practice of solutions journalism: rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.